DAY 22

We set out shortly after dawn. Jordan had worn his old military uniform, and brought a thick hunting bow, a spear, and the knife I had made for him. His pack was twice the size of mine. He said he didn't want to leave the trail once we found it, so he was bringing enough supplies for many days. Some of the neighbors who had been murdered lived several hours away by road, potentially multiple days through the forest.

First we went to the spot I had hid while the beast was prowling. The scent was stale now, but still enough to track. It hadn't been back here again.

"The guards have dogs, right? Why do you think they haven't found it yet?" I stood back up from sniffing the ground.

"Dogs are fine trackers, but they are just animals. Who can say if they are following the beast, or a squirrel? They can't talk."

The trail was erratic. The beast didn't seem to have a destination in mind, and it looped back on itself and stopped only to go off in some other direction. I was worried by the idea of finding it, but Jordan was confident and the day was bright. A few hours into the pursuit I found something it had buried. After uncovering it it turned out to be a half eaten and slightly rotten deer carcass. This was the first sign that the beast might have some intelligence, or at least good instincts. The scent trail changed here, tinged with sour decay as the beast must have smeared itself with the corpse. We followed it to a small creek, where evidently the beast had cleaned itself. The scent of blood and most of the sour harshness of it had been washed away. The beast had slept here, there were still some signs of it, though still faint.

A short distance away was the neighbor's house. The scent went all around the property, it has spent a day or more just watching and hiding. I tried not to think too much about how I had done almost the exact same thing outside Jordan's property. Maybe that was why the beast had left him alone. The difference was that when the beast went to their cabin, it had smashed through the door and murdered them. The scent of fear and death was still detectable underneath the scent of several people. I recognized the scent of the two men who brought the cart out from the town. They must have been the ones who discovered the bodies, though not for a few days by the smell of it. The beast's scent was everywhere in here, it had eaten the bodies of the family over a few days. A few short brown hairs were on the mattress. The beast had been sleeping on their bed. Jordan explained that as a smith he got more traffic than some of the other neighbors.

It wasn't even noon yet, but we had already gained three days on the beast. We hurried on, wanting to put that behind us, but knowing that we likely had several other similar scenes to search before we caught it.

The trail wound through the forest in the same chaotic path. After some discussion we decided that when we came to a spot where it crossed its own trail we would just follow the newest trail rather than the entire loop. We got to the next house in the early afternoon. It was much the same as the first. The beast had observed the people, circling the perimeter. The cabin itself was almost entirely burned down. There wasn't much scent under that, but I could smell the smoke on the trail, along with blood. Something must have lit on fire when the beast attacked, and it had been wounded somehow.

This was the one that had been noticed and the guards summoned to. The scent of them and their dogs turned it into a chaotic mess. Finding the beast's trail took me a frustrating few hours of spiraling outwards until we found enough clues to locate the trail.

We got to the third scene in mid afternoon. This one felt different so I waited outside the clearing thinking. These people hadn't been killed inside their house. One had been attacked outside the outhouse. Then a dog had been killed, presumably while still tied up due to the blood on the rope. Then the rest of the family had been attacked just outside the door. Had the beast learned from its injury and decided to lure the people out of the house? After killing them it had again stayed in their cabin for a night.

Jordan and I decided to break here for lunch. He spread out his map and we tried to find some sense in the path it was taking. Rather than the paper I expected, this was a cloth map, with embroidery. It lacked any names, but it was enough to show the river, roads, and houses. By the time we finished our jerky, bread, and berries we still hadn't noticed a pattern. It really did seem to be wandering aimlessly.

From here the path went to the river. It was only knee deep on Jordan in most places, but enough to have washed away the traces. This was where the dogs had lost the trail. The beast had travelled along the water rather than crossing. The search party had well and truly churned up the banks on both sides. If there had been tracks, they had been trampled over.

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"Upstream or downstream?" I asked

"It killed someone else downstream five or six days ago. Upstream goes back towards the way we came."

We each took one side of the river and slowly began searching our way downstream, Jordan took off his boots and laced them over his pack. I mostly walked along the bank, as the water was nearly hip deep on me. When one of us found something that might be a track we called the other over to check on it. Three hours later, and several false alarms over coyote or bear tracks, we found a sign. Not in the mud, but on a branch leaning over an embankment. The beast had grabbed on and climbed up, leaving a muddy mark that gave disturbing proof to the beast having opposable thumbs.

"Do you think it knew it was being followed?" I asked as Jordan dried off his feet and pulled his boots back on.

"I do. It has not spent so long moving in one direction since the beginning. Not a coincidence it only did so in a way that hid its trail."

"Any idea what it is?" He reached down and pulled me up onto the embankment.

"The Arbiter seems convinced it is a werewolf, hiding among the people during the day. Won't know for sure until we catch it, but I suspect it is a Barghest. A lingering spirit from the mountains to the south east, born of bears who have eaten too much man flesh. They are not quite animals or men anymore. I've never heard of one coming so far north by itself, but it wouldn't be the first wanderer on this side of the river." He gave me a pointed look at that last part.

" About that. Do you know why? Are the other, well, monsters, forced to stay on the other side, or are they just hunted down when they do cross?"

"Divine law. The beast and monsters should not be able to cross by themselves. Even if chased or forced by a fire, they would die on the riverbanks before crossing. Only followers of a god can break the law of other gods."

He made sure the arrows in his quiver were clear, and then we continued on. "Though maybe that is changing. There has been no sign of anyone else with the beast, and there's no reason why a god would send such a powerful follower to wander aimlessly by itself. If it had been commanded to kill these people, it would go straight from one to the other, without exploring the forest or delaying like it has. Then again, the gods cannot be judged by men. Maybe they told the beast to get lost and it did."

"Could this Barghest thing be a god?"

"No. Gods never take the forms of lesser beasts like a Barghest or, uh, goblins, except through the same illusion magic as anyone else, but that only lasts a few minutes at a time not weeks. You'd be able to smell it, and they wouldn't shed fur. They do take the forms of greater beasts sometimes, but if it were one of those gods powerful enough for that we would be in the middle of a war. When those inhuman gods move so do their armies."

We decided to camp here for the night. Under Jordan's instruction I dug a small fire pit to hide the light of our fire while he gathered some wood and set up his bedroll.

"A while back you said Huora lost the war? Was that the same war that decided the human borders?"

"No. There have been many wars. The Call For A Good Time human alliance beat the Ragamuffin monster alliance many years ago. Huora was before that. He was a human god, who mostly travelled alone. He came here almost a hundred years ago with some others. They didn't have an alliance, but they mostly cooperated and for a while none of the other gods cared enough about this land to fight them for it. Huora, Jojoagogo, Skellaboor, and Teefies. The others came and went, but Huora stayed for almost seventy years. Then the alliance moved in and fought him for the land. Skellaboor fought for a while with his undead followers but abandoned the war quickly and went back to the west, Teefies packed up her workshop and left when the fighting started. She was the one who taught the man who taught me to smith. Jojoagogo didn't even show up when summoned. Huora joined the alliance after he was beaten, so he is still our god, but he doesn't appear much any more since he agreed to aid their war in return."

"Oh. That sounds chaotic." Did I know those names from somewhere? It must have been something he had mentioned before.

"It's not so bad. Compared to the central lands to the southwest. Thousands of gods, hundreds of alliances. The land might be conquered dozens of times a day. One god burns a town, another uses their magic to rebuild it."

"Are the gods immortal?"

"It's complicated. Mostly they are, but sometimes they die. Before Huora there was Jinglehammer, and he was killed by Huora in a duel. His tomb is in Hammercabana, the town he built a few days north of here. I saw his body while in the army, he wanted his skeleton kept in a crystal coffin. Mostly their corpse vanishes and they reappear unharmed. Sometimes a god vanishes for years at a time, or just falls asleep. Jojoagogo did that once in my grandfather's tavern. Fell asleep and didn't wake up for three years. "

"Jeeze. Are there any gods around here these days? Could we ask one for help with the beast?"

"The alliance is based to the west of here, in Castle Greyballs two days away. Messengers have been sent, but it might be weeks before they respond. The war in the centre takes most of their attention these days. It's been several months since one visited us. They're all crazy about something called Void Shards now, and you can't find any here."

"How do the gods come here? Is there a thing? Some kind of magic helmet? A door? Something that sends their spirits here? Is there any special spot they appear or disappear from?"

"I don't know. They come and go as they please."

That certainly sounded like some of the shenanigans I had gotten up to in games, just never with this amount of realism or depth. I guess I had the bad luck to spawn in a "fly over zone". I still had no idea how. Was I in a coma, and some kind or sadistic soul had plugged me in? Games hadn't been anywhere near this advanced last I checked. Or was I just tripping balls on amazing drugs and it had only been thirty seven minutes and not almost a month?